Here is your Soundtrack for 2026
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this old man from the Midwest doesn't know who 95% (or more) of these artists are.
This old man from New England thought "oh, I'll know more of these than the old man from the Midwest".
Nope. Ooffff.
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Thoughts on the second half
Maybe I was a little more generous than last night.
- Yes: 5
- No: 15
- Maybe: 0
| Track | Notes | Verdict | | --------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------- | ------- | | La Samaria (Bomba Estéreo, Carlos Vives) | Didn't like this one — in Spanish | No | | Lights on Long Island (Driveways) | Didn't like this one | No | | Morning in America (Durand Jones & The Indications) | R&B — I liked this one | Yes | | Morning Sun (Otis Kane) | Another R&B — this was decent too | Yes | | My Life Is Real (Nas, DJ Premier) | Rap | No | | Mystical Magical (Benson Boone) | Ok — but not my style | No | | Ohtani (Eladio Carrion) | Spanish/rap?/autotune? | No | | Pain and Misery (The Teskey Brothers) | I like this one | Yes | | Phone Numbers (Dominic Fike, Kenny Beats) | Rap? | No | | Planté Bandera (Tommy Olivencia y Su Orquesta, Chamaco Ramirez) | Salsa is not my thing | No | | Pull Like a Dog (The Scratch) | Noise | No | | Rome (Dojo Cuts) | R&B with a nice female vocal | Yes | | Take Your Aim (Rocket) | Rock but not really my style | No | | The False Economy (Soulwax) | Dislike the vintage synth beat | No | | To Build Something (Malted Milk) | Pretty good | Yes | | Too Much (Russ) | Rap — explicit lyrics | No | | Tú Con Él (Rauw Alejandro) | Another salsa track? | No | | Wheelz of Steel (Outkast) | Rap | No | | When I B On Tha Mic (Rakim) | Rap — explicit lyrics | No | | White Lighter (Jean Dawson) | It didn't grab me | No | -
Final thoughts now after sampling all of the tunes. Unlike last year there are not enough tracks I truly like that I will leave them on. I said Yes to 7 out of 45 tracks and that may have been generous. That would mean they will cycle too quickly and I will burn out on them. So all music is getting shut off this year.
Maybe SDS has demographic data on their audience, but I find it hard to believe that the preponderance of Rap suits the overall baseball demographic.
And I said it last year and I will say it this year, I still do not understand their desire or need to choose tracks with explicit lyrics for a game that is rated E for Everyone. I know they choose the censored versions of these tracks but it still seems like a odd choice to choose songs that drop the F bomb in the second line of the track. Even if you are a fan of these artists do you really want to listen to censored versions of the tracks.
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I will be running Amazon Music with my own playlists all year. I’m not a fan of the rap overload that appears here. I will give it a week or so, but I’m taking the 13th off of work to dive into the game uninterrupted all day and will be surprised if I still have the jukebox on by 5pm that day.
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Afghan Whigs ''House of I'' is mentioned being on the soundtrack in the official blog but elsewhere its not listed and on top of that, after scouring the interweb, then asking Google A.I., I can find no such song by the Whigs in this section of the multiverse???
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Not a fan of the soundtrack, but I'm old and don't listen to the radio or anything that came out in the last 30 years.
Psy
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As usual even if you don't know most of the artists, there are guaranteed to always be 4-5 songs you end up really liking, 4-5 songs you loathe entirely and a lot of meh in the middle.
For 2025, the sneaky highlights for me were "The End" and that song "Cherry Tree." Also, did anyone else notice that "Groceries" was also in 2024? Has that ever happened before with a song from these playlists being in back-to-back titles? Figured the SDS thing to do would be to at least wait a year before bringing it back as a "Returning Legend."
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As usual even if you don't know most of the artists, there are guaranteed to always be 4-5 songs you end up really liking, 4-5 songs you loathe entirely and a lot of meh in the middle.
While I did find 6 songs that I would say that I liked, I would say that there were a whole lot more songs I loathed. Very few fell into the Meh category for me. I actively disliked the majority of the rest of the tracks.
Songs I would leave turned on
Does Anybody Know (Jesse Roper)
Honky Tonk Hell (Marcus King)
Morning in America (Durand Jones & The Indications)
Pain and Misery (The Teskey Brothers)
Rome (Dojo Cuts)
To Build Something (Malted Milk)But 6 songs out of 45 is too few to leave turned on. They would become too repetitive and I would burn out on them quickly.
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It would be different if they were cheating out on the music to toss that money into more development but uh, well, here we are.
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Interested in hearing what the RoFlo narration will be like for a while. But since it's brand new and the volume will most likely be unsustainable, I'll switch over to my brand new playlist 'Jimmy Eat Goo' featuring ... well ... you could probably guess.
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I've heard of exactly 3 of these performers and actually listen to none.
This middle age guy from the PNW just turns the music off first thing as well though anyway so it doesn't really matter to me.
